Are Twitter's New Hearts Clickier Than Stars?

Twitter morphing stars into hearts is being almost uniformly heralded as a business decision — numbers aren't good; anything is better — but let's look at it from a interaction design perspective. Could this tiny twist make more people literally heart Twitter?

Several designers I reached out to thought it wasn't that big of a deal. It's the endlessly debated Likes vs Favourites conversation, which isn't really a debate to some UX designers. People use whatever button you give them.

But one thing I often hear people say is that they don't "get" Twitter. Could the heart help demystify Twitter a little by making the service feel more accessible to more users? You know, a human touch?

Not sure I like the heart (so to speak), but do like how Twitter seems to be making efforts to be more intuitive to more people.

Maybe people understand hearts. We use them a lot already. In fact, they are almost too prevalent in interaction design. Our own Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan's excellent taxonomy shows how hearts are beating strong across social media.

That is probably the most puzzling thing of all. Twitter's star was different. Why they decided to switch to a heart when they had years of star-power is very puzzling.

Twitter claims they tested the heart, by the way, and that people "loved it" more than the star:

The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people.

Wait, pretty sure there are stars in other time zones. Is a heart really more universal than a star? There are many more stars then there are hearts in the universe.

@awalkerinLA Nope! Simply sharing Twitter's intent to use a more universal symbol.

It also was a way of acknowledging things that you might not necessarily want in your own timeline, as this Medium story on favourites by Tressie McMillan Cottom argues very eloquently. The "This Tweet Made Me Laugh or Think But No Way In Hell Am I Retweeting It" Fav.

Favs were a way for people to bookmark tweets about stuff they wanted to read later, or call something out sarcastically, or obliquely flirt, or dozens of other arcane and weirdly personal things. Since then, "like" has become less a tech-speak thing and more just how people talk, uh, IRL. A star could mean "good job" or "fuck you" or "I'll come back and decide later," but a heart pretty much means the same thing, to everyone, all the time.

Agreed. There's much, much less nuance in a heart.

But switching to hearts might actually be more of a business decision than we could ever guess. Twitter might want to find out what you really like. This is how Facebook targets their ads. And we know Twitter is doing some big ad deals.

Twitter❤️ effort to create consistent meaning for faves? Tracking what people ❤️ likely creates tighter ad profile than what they bookmark.

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